[45] So in 1798: _Pub. Laws of R. I._ (1798), 481. See also _Gen. Laws_ (1896), 760, 761, where exclusive jurisdiction in such cases is vested in the appellate division of the supreme court.
[47] _Pub. Laws_ (1844), 263. But this provision may be earlier; I have not been able to verify the date.
[49] _Gen. Laws_ (1896), 634. Eight causes are here formally enumerated; but the act further declares that when it is alleged in the petition that the parties have lived apart from each other for at least ten years, the court may in its discretion grant a divorce: _ibid._, 634. This provision originated in 1893: _Acts and Resolves_ (1892-93), 237.
[51] For the rare cases of permission to live "apart" granted by the legislature cannot be regarded as historically important.
[53] _Gen. Law_ (1896), 634, 635; _Pub. Laws_ (1902), 39. This act of 1902 allows such separation, provided the petitioner has been a domiciled inhabitant of the state and has resided there for such length of time as the court shall deem sufficient.
The first word in the history of divorce legislation for Vermont appears in the records of the "assumption" period. In 1779 the "representatives of the freemen" authorize the superior court to grant dissolution of the bond of marriage for the same four causes allowed at that time by the Connecticut laws, but by implication only the aggrieved person is permitted to remarry.[54] This restriction does not appear in the statutes enacted after the attainment of statehood. By these the supreme court may grant either spouse a decree for impotence, adultery, intolerable severity, three years' wilful desertion with total neglect of duty, or for the usual term of long absence unheard of.[55] The same grounds are retained in 1805, but with one important modification. In the case of "intolerable severity" it is left optional with the court whether the decree shall be from bed and board or from the marriage bond.[56] This provision, however, was short-lived, for it seems to have been repealed in 1807.[57] The number of causes of divorce _a vinculo_ in 1839 has increased to six, but one old ground--impotence has given place to two new ones--actual confinement on a criminal sentence for three years or more, and gross, wanton, and cruel neglect of the husband to provide when he is able.[58] By the existing law the same six causes are expressly recognized.[59] But the statute contemplates divorce on still other grounds; for it is provided that libels for causes other than those named shall be tried in the county where the persons or one of them resides.[60] The last word of the period is retrogressive, decrees from bed and board being restored after an interval of almost exactly one hundred years. By the act of November 24, 1896, such separations, "forever or for a limited time," are authorized, as in Rhode Island, "for any of the causes for which a divorce from the bond of matrimony may be declared."[61] Jurisdiction is now vested in the county courts, each held by an assigned judge of the supreme court, who may try questions of fact as well as of law.[62]